Party Drug Exacts Price Days Later, UConn Researcher Says

Ecstasy tablets seized at the Belem International Airport are seen in the… (?? STRINGER Brazil / Reuters…)

March 24, 2014|By WILLIAM WEIR, bweir@courant.com, The Hartford Courant

Well-known risks of MDMA — the drug that often goes by "molly" and "ecstasy" — include dehydration and heat stroke, but a study out of UConn also found that the euphoric effects of the drug can turn to depression a few days later.

"If they do it on a Saturday, somewhere around Tuesday or Wednesday, they feel really depressed," said Dr. Michael C. White, head of the pharmacy practice department at the University of Connecticut. "There's a price to pay for feeling so good in the short term."

For his study, published Monday in the Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, White reviewed 36 studies on the drug published from 2003 to 2013. He began his research in September, shortly after several MDMA-related deaths occurred at electronic music events in the nation.

In August, a New Hampshire college student died after taking a suspected overdose of molly at a music show in Boston. And at Middlebury's Quassy Amusement Park in September, four people collapsed after taking a drug known as 2C-P, which doesn't contain MDMA, but is one of the many designer drugs grouped with molly.

"There seemed to be a lot of confusion," White said. "So I decided to go through all the available literature and make some determination as to where are the desired effects coming from as far as hormones and chemicals."

Although much has been made of the drug's effects on serotonin — a chemical in the brain that strongly influences emotions — White said less attention has been spent on what MDMA does to oxytocin. That's the hormone that new mothers generate in high concentrations and creates the sense of a strong emotional bond in the mother with her baby.

When people take MDMA, he said, they also release high levels of this hormone.

"So when people go to raves or other parties, they think everyone is really friendly and that they can trust everybody," White said. It can create a sense of community, he said, but it can also lead to situations that end in sexual assaults. "There are some people who they're trusting that shouldn't be trusted."

Dehydration and heat stroke are also dangers of MDMA, especially when it's taken at events with warm temperatures and a lot of dancing.

"It's mostly caused by your having what seems like unlimited energy," he said. "It's caused by dancing around, exertion. You need to stop, but you're not listening to those cues because you feel great and feel like you have a great deal of energy."

But trying to counteract that by taking lots of water, White said, can also be risky. That's because MDMA can lower the amount of salt in the blood. Adding lots of water to this can exacerbate the problem and can induce seizures and coma.

MDMA was invented in 1912, but it wasn't until the 1980s that it emerged as a party drug. Then it was mostly known as ecstasy." It's more commonly known as molly now and contains widely varying amounts of MDMA. Most tablets sold as MDMA contain 73 to 89 milligrams of MDMA. But some can contain as much as 150 milligrams. That wide range can be dangerous, White said.